Research Plays Key Role for Human Development Faculty

Faculty members in Cal State San Marcos’ human development program are in agreement when it comes to their students: The students all want to make a difference in people’s lives.

“These kids want to change the world, and they can have a major that actively works at that,” said Alice Quiocho, director of CSUSM’s human development department in the College of Education, Health and Human Services.

CSUSM’s human development program provides students with a strong foundation for career development in working with people with diverse needs and backgrounds.

“The faculty here are open to possibilities,” Quiocho said. “They’re open to thinking outside the box.”

Human development contributes to promoting quality of life by understanding how individuals develop and change from conception to death; how environments influence individual development; and how basic knowledge of human development can be used to develop and assess programs to improve the lives of individuals.

Research plays a large role in the work human development faculty do with CSUSM students. Here’s a closer look at some of their projects:

Rodney Beaulieu

Beaulieu is an assistant professor whose research interests are action oriented, focusing on methods to improve personal development, organizations and communities.

He recently published a research article in Cogent Education titled, “A Critical Discourse Analysis of Teacher-Student Relationships in a Third-Grade Literacy Lesson: Dynamics of Microaggression.”

The study focused on a recording from a week of third-grade classroom sessions that was used to train new teachers in a certification program.

While the third-grade teacher was described as “outstanding” and “culturally responsive” by the university professor who had been using the recording to train teacher candidates, Beaulieu’s article notes that critical discourse analysis revealed microaggressions that prioritized white males, among other findings. The recording was eventually withdrawn from the certification program.

Beaulieu also submitted to the Journal of Practitioner Research a research project titled “A Practitioner Research Model for Human Services” and co-authored a recently submitted article to Administrative Science titled “The Self-Action Leadership Model: A Qualitative, Nomological Expansion of Self-Leadership Theory Rooted in Action Research Theory.”

Beaulieu is part of a team presenting at a poster session next month at the 2016 Gerontological Society of America Conference. The project is titled “An Action Research Approach to Adapting Jaques-Dalcroze Eurhythmics as a Community Fall Prevention Program for American Older Adults.” The project included CSUSM kinesiology interns who supported the older adult clients.

Rafael Hernández